by Ahern, Jerry
Michael safed, then holstered both pistols, then took Rolvaag’s hand, brought it to the hilt of the knife. Rolvaag slapped him gently on the cheek.
Michael Rourke drew his knife, waiting.
Bjorn Rolvaag moved up and stood beside the door.
Michael held his breath.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The door into the stairwell was opened, Rolvaag creeping through. Beyond it, in the growing light from what seemed to be an air circulation vent low in the wall, Michael Rourke could barely make out a patchwork of concrete blocks, almost identical to the one through which he and Rolvaag had passed when leaving the recreation hall.
Rolvaag struck a match, the flare of the match brilliantly bright in the otherwise yellow tinged darkness. Rolvaag began moving it carefully over the blocks, at last the flame flickering. Rolvaag extinguished the match, the darkness sudden, but in the faint light diffused from the air vent, Michael could gradually see Rolvaag’s hands moving over the concrete blocks, eventually the Icelandic policeman’s hands coming to rest, fingers splayed.
He nodded to Michael. Michael nodded back. Rolvaag pulled on the blocks with his fingertips. There was a grating sound, a flicker of movement as the blocks slipped inward.
Bjorn Rolvaag ran through the opening, whistling to the dog Hrothgar, Michael Rourke just behind Rolvaag, through the opening and into the light just in time to catch a glimpse of the mighty animal bounding past him. He squinted against the sudden brightness as he hurtled himself laterally against the back of one of the men in the room, a KGB Elite Corpsman, tunic open, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Michael’s left hand grabbed a handful of the
tunic, wheeling the man around as his right arm arced forward, thrusting the knife, primary edge upward, into the man’s abdomen.
Michael saw Rolvaag’s staff flashing, into the jaw of a KGB Elite Corpsman, the other end of the staff ramming into the man’s testicles.
As Michael shoved the man he’d just stabbed away from him, he ripped the knife free, slashing with it horizontally, ripping open the man’s throat before there was any chance the man might cry out.
Rolvaag’s staff hammered down, its head impacting the man he’d just neutered over the Adam’s apple, finishing him.
There were only three guards, the third unconscious or dead on the floor, Hrothgar drooling over him.
Beyond a wall of steel bars, there were some three dozen men in various degrees of dress, but all in green. As some of them started to shout, Rolvaag held a finger to his Jips and signaled, “Shh.”
Rolvaag walked over to his dog, stroking the animal between its ears. As Michael looked closer, there was a growing pool of blood from the back of the third guard’s head, where the skull had smashed against the concrete block wall when Hrothgar had leaped upon him.
“Keys,” Michael almost whispered, finding a ring on the body of the man Rolvaag had killed.
He tried the most likely looking key in the single cell door. It worked.
Bjorn Rolvaag walked toward the open cell door, began speaking, his voice even, well-modulated, his words totally unintelligible to Michael Rourke. There were somber nods from among the just freed Icelandic policemen, and then there were smiles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Gradually, Annie became less aware of the pressure of her body against the couch, really totally unaware of her body at all, as if she weren’t inside it anymore.
There was darkness.
And then there was a red wash and beyond the red wash she saw her father. She was Natalia.
Her father’s face was in a mirror, but he wasn’t her father, he was the only man she’d ever cared about and loved, instead. But she knew he was her father. She looked away from the mirror and she saw herself in another mirror. But she saw Natalia’s body, wearing a cream-colored silk teddy with white lace trim and no stockings, standing barefoot in front of the mirror.
Her hands moved down along her bare thighs.
She felt hot.
She was sitting on a stool in front of a vanity mirror, the stool covered with some sort of ruffled cushion and with ruffles on all sides to the floor. There was a ruffled cover on the vanity table. She was naked.
Her hands were moving over her own body—
“No.”
“All right, Annie. This is Doctor Rothstein. At the count of three, I’ll snap my fingers and you’ll awaken feeling perfectly refreshed and you’ll be able to tell me what you
saw, but only as an observer. It will not have affected you personally. You didn’t experience it. Is that understood?” “Yes.”
“One … two … three …” He snapped his fingers.
Annie Rubenstein opened her eyes.
“Maggie!” She was half out of the couch, and threw her arms around Maggie Barrow and leaned her face against the woman’s shoulder.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Maggie Barrow almost whispered.
“Tell me what you saw, Mrs. Rubenstein,” Doctor Rothstein said softly.
Annie licked her lips. She sat up, looked at Rothstein. She pushed her open palms down along her thighs, to smooth her skirt. She remembered.
“She’s in love with my father. I was—she was—” She felt her cheeks flushing. How could she ever say what she’d seen, what she’d felt?
Maggie Barrow held her hand… .
The men of the Icelandic police force tended to their uniforms as though they were about to be on dress parade, their green tunics, their wide belts. Their swords. Each man had one, all of them dumped ignominiously in the far corner of the room, each man lifting his sword into his hands almost lovingly, only Rolvaag without one.
But the swords were largely ceremonial, a badge of office, and Michael Rourke doubted that as many as ten percent of the Icelandic constabulary could have used a sword as an effective weapon.
They moved, all thirty-seven of them, Michael and Rolvaag included, thirty-eight if Michael counted the dog, out of the detention room and into the office beyond, having first checked that no additional Soviet personnel were present.
Rolvaag walked calmly across the office toward the far wall. Ordinary desks, wooden file cabinets, in and out baskets. Telephones.
But on the far wall, beneath glass, there was a single sword, its scabbard and wide belt mounted beneath it. The sword was set over a flag, Icelandic but not a proper flag, because there was a symbol in the flag which Michael had never seen before. Perhaps for—
But he had seen it.
It was a crest, a family crest. And he had seen it before on the china service Madame Jokli used for tea.
Rolvaag swung his staff against the glass, the glass shattering, Michael expecting now that at any moment the Soviets would be alerted. But there was nothing to do but wait while whatever it was Rolvaag was doing was done. Rolvaag pulled a chair over to the wall, stood on it, with his right hand reaching up for the sword, taking it.
There was a murmur so loud among the Icelandic policemen surrounding Michael Rourke that it could have passed for a cheer.
It probably was.
One of the other policemen ran forward, clambering up on a second chair, removing the scabbard and belt. Rolvaag stood beside one of the desks now, set down the sword. He took the scabbard and belt from the policeman who handed it to him.
He buckled it on.
Rolvaag picked up the sword. There was no ceremony to it, although he did look at it for a moment. And there was a certain sadness in his eyes.
He sheathed the sword, then strode across the room, Hrothgar at his heels, toward the doorway leading to the outside. The other policemen followed him and Michael went with them.
Annie stood in the small bathroom Doctor Rothstein had shown her to. Maggie had volunteered to come in with her, but she’d told her it wasn’t necessary.
She stared at her face in the mirror now, exhausted, ashamed for experiencing Natalia’s thoughts.
But she was both a Rourke and a Rubenstein now, daugh
ter to one of the three finest men in the world, sister to another and wife of the third.
Natalia’s obsession might be the key, or perhaps something else was. She’d never find it staring at herself in the bathroom mirror and crying.
Annie began to dry her tears… .
They stood on the small porch at the head of the steps. With the faintly purple light, despite the black shapes of the Soviet gunships, Hekla was beautiful. A warm paradise amid the arctic wastes.
“Bjorn?” Michael almost whispered. He wanted to tell Rolvaag they should sneak up on the enemy, not just stand here.
But there was no way to tell Rolvaag or the others. It was their land, so he supposed it was their fight to choose.
Rolvaag started down the steps, his staff in his left hand, drawing his sword with his right.
And they began to run, just slowly at first, as though jogging, each man in step.
And Bjorn Rolvaag began to sing as the pace increased, the other men of the Icelandic police force joining him, raising their voices as loud as thunder.
There were Soviet personnel visible now, some of them raising rifles, no one shooting, men ceasing to work on their helicopters, others, uniforms askew, emerging from the fronts of buildings or into open upper story windows.
“O Gud vors lands …” Michael knew the meaning of those words, “God of our land.”
His knife, the one made for him by old Jon the swordma-ker, was in his right fist, raised high like the swords of the Icelandic police.
They ran now full out, toward the steps of the presidential palace.
A hastily assembling squad of Soviet Elite Corps personnel was forming at the height of the steps. The Icelandic policemen were still singing. The Elite Corpsmen raised their assault rifles.
Off the greenway, onto the walkway, across it. The Soviet troops took aim. To the steps.
They ran, up the steps, eight men abreast, Michael Rourke in the front rank.
The officer with the Elite Corpsmen gave an order Michael Rourke recognized.
It was the order to fire.
Michael drew the Beretta pistol from under his right arm, the knife still held high overhead in his right hand. He would not be the first to fire, because the moment the first shot was discharged, the magic that seemed to hold all around them enthralled would cease and there would be a bloodbath.
Halfway up the steps.
Gunfire rang out.
Three of the Icelandic police on either side of him fell dead, Michael sidestepping one of the bodies, stabbing the Beretta toward the nearest target and opening fire.
More of the Icelandic police fell.
They were nearly to the height of the steps now.
Rolvaag shouted something Michael Rourke understood, even though he did not understand the words.
They quickened their pace.
Michael felt something tear at his left bicep, nearly spinning him around, breaking his stride. But he kept running, the Beretta empty in his cramping left hand as they closed with the Soviet troops.
Swords flashed against rifles, chunks of rifle stocks splintering away. Michael’s knife stabbed outward, into the throat of one man, the chest of another, the butt of his slide open pistol smashing down on the head of a third man.
And there was Bjorn Rolvaag, swinging the sword over his head like some Viking prince from a fairy tale, cleaving men’s helmets in half, splitting the skulls beneath them, hacking his way forward.
The empty pistol Michael stuffed into his belt.
He grabbed up a Soviet assault rifle, nearly losing it when his fingers didn’t want to respond. He opened fire, the rifle
rocking in his weakened fist, men going down.
A rifle butt slammed into his abdomen and he fell back, ramming the flash-deflectored muzzle of the Soviet rifle into the right eye of the man who’d struck him. To his knees. He slumped forward, stood, ramming his knife upward into the chest of one of the Elite Corpsmen.
A wave of green around him, a dozen of the Icelandic police in the wake of Bjorn Rolvaag. And Michael was drawn along within it, gasping for breath from the pain in his stomach, still holding his blood-drenched knife in his right hand.
Into the hallway.
Soviet guards. But they ran toward the side entrance. Rolvaag’s mighty sword cleaved into the doors leading to the presidential office and the doors split apart and fell away.
Madame Jokli sat in a chair, her blond hair neatly combed.
A Soviet officer stood beside her, pistol to her head. Rolvaag whistled.
Hrothgar bounded out of their midst and lunged.
As the Soviet officer wheeled toward the dog, Michael Rourke let his knife fall, ripping the second Beretta from beneath his left armpit.
He stabbed it toward the Soviet officer.
Hrothgar’s body impacted the Soviet officer, hurtling the man downward.
As the man raised up on one elbow, the dog’s jaws inches from his throat, Michael pulled the trigger.
The single pistol shot reverberated off the walls, Michael’s ears ringing with it oddly.
Hrothgar stood, poised to strike.
The Soviet officer’s head slumped back, the pistol falling from his fingers to the carpeted floor.
Madame Jokli stood.
Michael Rourke’s right hand lowered.
Bjorn Rolvaag lowered his sword.
Michael couldn’t help but think, “Now what?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The airfield was covered with snow. Wolfgang Mann’s squadron of J7-Vs had landed in a precise circle and, engines running and waiting, she noticed, synth fuel to burn, as Colonel Mann’s own aircraft touched down.
Colonel Mann emerged from his mobile communications center as the flight crew began opening the fuselage doorway. There was an odd look in his eyes and he seemed very tired. “The base here is ours, but precious few of our personnel remain able to fight to any great degree. Another Soviet attack from the air in force and the base will be overrun. I’m ordering complete withdrawal to Eden Base itself. Portable breastworks and additional anti-aircraft batteries are being flown in from New Germany, the attack there temporarily stalled. That’s the only way reinforcements here have become possible. Would you care to disembark, Sarah? You will be perfectly safe.” And then he smiled, but the smile wasn’t for her, really. She could feel that. “But why should I say something like that to you? If I had a single platoon of men who displayed your courage, I could conquer the earth if I were so inclined. But what good would there be in that?” And he looked away as he reached out his hand for her elbow.
Sarah let him take it.
With her parka hood up and her parka zipped to her neck and the heavy arctic gloves, she was still cold as thev steDoed
through the doorway and onto the small, low steps.
The dull roar of the J7-Vs’ engines surrounded them, punctuated only by the howling of the wind.
Snow touched her cheeks and the tip of her nose.
Colonel Mann offered his arm and she took it. They began to walk. His arm seemed to radiate a tenseness.
There was activity in the main shelter which still stood largely intact, but gone were the heat machines which kept the runway surfaces clear and warm. She remembered coming to the base in Lydveldid Island, wearing her Icelandic skirts and cocooned in her shawl.
It was very different here, and likely worse there. Michael. It was impossible to tell him not to go. He was too much like his father for that. Maria Leuden would find that out.
Colonel Mann was speaking to her and she realized she wasn’t listening to him at all. “I’m sorry, Wolfgang, I just was lost in thought, that’s all. How’s Elaine Halversen?”
“She is working inside. I thought you might like to see her, but for a time she will likely be engaged in the happy task of realizing that her young lieutenant still lives. There has been so much death.” He looked away from her, surveying the airfield across which they walked. “There are a
dequate medical facilities remaining here to deduce the specific nature of his injuries. They are supervised by none other than a gentleman already of your acquaintance, Doctor Munchen.”
“He’s here?”
“Yes,” Mann nodded, tugging at his uniform cap. It was cocked at a slightly rakish angle, almost making him look like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in the movie The Prisoner of Zenda. Why was she thinking that? He didn’t look at all like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
“What were you saying before I asked about Doctor Halversen?”
“I was merely remarking on something of a personal nature. It is best left unsaid again.”
She stopped walking, taking back her arm. “Try me,” she told him, her chin cocked up so she could see his eyes better and look almost into them.
“I was saying, Frau Rourke, how truly I enjoy your company, and that I did not wish to presume, but I consider you a friend. A man like myself has few real friends.”
“Thank you.” She watched his Adam’s apple, which wasn’t particularly prominent, rise and fall, as though he were swallowing. There were tears in his eyes. The wind? “What else were you saying?”
“There is, as you are aware, a resurgent Neo-Nazi movement. I have long been aware that I am considered among its principal targets for assassination. During the attack—” The tears flowed, not freely, but in abundance over his high cheekbones, his eyes filled with them. “She worked to aid the wounded. A man came up to her—a soldier nearby was killed as well. The man escaped. He shot my wife in the head and neck three times and she died.”
Sarah Rourke sucked in her breath so rapidly it sounded like a scream. “My God, Wolfgang.”
“She was a fine woman, a very—” He bit his lower lip, his voice coming hard now. “It is why - why I wished, wished to walk, Sarah. I cannot—the men cannot see me—”
She reached and held Wolfgang Mann’s hand. She wanted to fold him in her arms.
“Walk with me,” she whispered, holding his hand very tightly. He raised his head, the wind and snow lashing at his tear-streaked face. Erect, shoulders thrown back, he only nodded, holding to her hand so tightly she thought that her hand would break.
